View Slide Show19 Photographs

Picturing Jimi, Janis, Miles and Duke

The album cover may say “Aretha in Paris,” but Jim Cummins knows better.

“I shot that at Madison Square Garden in 1968 at the Soul Together concert,” he said. “The lighting looked like that of the Olympia Theater, so Atlantic used my shot.”

And a lot more. Beginning with covers for Aretha Franklin and Sam & Dave (both taken that day at Madison Square Garden), he went on to become a contract photographer for Atlantic Records, as well as shoot concerts and formal cover portraits for some 900 albums on Capitol, Mercury and Columbia, too. His work includes intimate glimpses of musical giants like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Blue Magic and Wilson Pickett. Countless other shots of sunsets, meadows and churches graced the covers of gospel albums put out by Savoy.

“At one point, I don’t think there was a home that didn’t have some of my artwork, an album cover, in it,” said Mr. Cummins, 67, who has since gone on to photograph for Newsday and The New York Times. “My work was varied. I even photographed Guy Lombardo, the Lettermen, Glen Campbell, too.”

It all started in June 1968 with a last-minute invitation to the Soul Together concert, which featured Ms. Franklin, Sam & Dave, Sonny and Cher, Joe Tex, King Curtis, and the Young Rascals — all Atlantic artists with hits on the charts. He took his cameras and knocked out some rolls. He sent the results to Atlantic on spec.

They liked the take and said they would get back to him. Two weeks later, he learned they were using two of his pictures for album covers: “Aretha in Paris” and Sam & Dave’s “I Thank You.” The company went on to offer him a contract in which he would shoot 25 covers or promotional sessions every three months. A lot of times, they were rush jobs as tracks for an album had been selected and were waiting on only the cover art.

It was a golden age for rock and soul, and the recording companies were living, and spending, high.

“It was nothing for them to put me on a charter flight to do something in California and fly right back,” he said. “Or get me a limo to go to Philadelphia. It would be nothing for me to shoot 30 rolls of film, and get it processed in the middle of the country, which cost a fortune. They had the money, and they spent it to get what they needed.”

Jim CumminsKen Kumba and Yusef Lateef, 1970s. (Double exposure.)

He got what he needed through ample access to the artists, on stage and in the studio. Unlike now, when photographers are ushered into a concert and allowed to shoot a couple of songs, he could linger for the set.

“I got close to Wilson Pickett,” he said. “The first time I had to photograph him was for the ‘Hey Jude’ album. Everybody said to me, ‘I don’t envy you. He’s rough.’ I was scared. I got to the Apollo and knocked on his door.

“We don’t have much time,” Mr. Pickett said. “Can we do something right now?”

“I picked a background, said a couple of things to him and got a good moment. It ran as a cover a week later. Pickett called me later and said he wanted to use me for his next covers.”

Not that it always went so quickly. On a subsequent cover shoot, Mr. Pickett kept delaying, often postponing the session but inviting Mr. Cummins to go with him to Bobby Womack’s studio, where card games kept the musicians occupied between takes.

“We were hanging out and not getting anything done,” Mr. Cummins said. “We finally got a call from his manager who said, ‘This is what I’m going to do: If you don’t have your act together, I’m going to run an old picture of Pickett with a process hairdo, a pink suit and your name in the credits.’ We got our act together the next day.”

Even those marathon hangout sessions in the studio gave him a peek into the creative process. Several times, he saw how banter during card games among the musicians led to songs being composed on the spot.

“That’s how they did Pickett’s ‘Don’t Knock My Love’,” Mr. Cummins said. “The guys were sitting around playing cards, and one guy said ‘Man, I got a garbage hand.’ Another guy says ‘If you don’t like it, don’t knock it. Somebody else might go and rock it.’ They looked at each other and realized they had the words to a song. Everybody got up and started to play.”

His approach to covering concerts and doing covers was shaped by his art-school studies, as well as a long stint working at Newsweek magazine cover department under Bob Engle.

“He was a genius,” Mr. Cummins said. “You found out what was appealing as a cover, the elements that made a cover. You knew what to look for in portraits.”

He credited photographers he met on the Newsweek job with giving him insights. Later, in the 1970s, he spent several hours talking with Alfred Eisenstaedt during a shoot for The Washington Star.

“Everything I thought I knew before went out the window,” Mr. Cummins said. “He taught me how to shoot a portrait. If it takes more than 15 minutes, you’ve lost the subject. He taught me how to sit them, what to say, what not to say. Don’t take too long or ask anybody to smile. ”

In some cases, nothing he did could help.

“Hank Crawford?” Mr. Cummins recalled. “You know the pictures of Jesus with the eyes that follow you around? That’s what it was like shooting him. He never changed expression. He never moved.”

On the other hand, he still remembers the day Miles Davis tipped his hat to him as he walked offstage (Slide 6). Or the moment he snapped an intense Jimi Hendrix recording “Izabella” at the Hit Factory (Slide 2).

“It was very tense,” he said. “They had Hendrix on a 50-foot cord on the guitar. He was walking from room to room playing. I was there for four hours. It’s tense when you’re working in the studio, you have to keep out of people’s way because they’ll throw you out. And rightfully so, it’s a very personal period of time.”

And now, in some ways, it’s a bygone time. The era of free spending is gone as recordings companies continue to adjust to digital technologies and delivery. And the album cover — a once-totemic object — has been downsized to thumbnails on Web sites.

“I used to go to a record store and see 50 Wilson Pickett covers stapled to a wall, and that is an ego trip to see your work like that,” he said. “An album cover used to be a big thing. Today, it doesn’t have the same impact because of its size. In many cases, you see more type on the cover. There is not the same artistic value put in the covers these days. There has been a loss of visual impact.”

Jim CumminsJimi Hendrix in concert at Madison Square Garden in New York.